


no hurt and no fear

by beenana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Clingy Stiles Stilinski, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Malia's A Good Girlfriend, Non-Consensual Touching, Season/Series 04, The Majority Of The Fic Takes Place In A Bathroom Stall, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 16:52:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beenana/pseuds/beenana
Summary: When Stiles tries to hold her hand beneath the library table during study hall, Malia just can’t take it anymore.  She doesn’t yank her hand away because he’s Stiles and she likes him, dammit, but her body does go rigid in surprise.  They don’t hold hands.  They just don’t.“What gives?” she hisses, glancing pointedly down at where their fingers are linked together.  “What’s wrong with you?”It comes out harsher than she means it, but his scent is soured with something she can’t quite place and it has her stomach tying in knots.  Stiles always smells kind of bad – of anxiety and a low-grade, simmering melancholy that he can never quite shake – but this is something else entirely.  It puts her on edge.Stiles gets clingy and Malia finally finds out why.  Heed the warnings.





	no hurt and no fear

**Author's Note:**

> listen i hope no one comes out of this thinking "wow, malia's a horrible girlfriend!" because that's not my intention at all. i just think she's really independent and bad at tact and sometimes her caring tactics leave much to be desired. she loves stiles so much, though...never doubt that.
> 
> this is set during season 4 at some point because garrett is the perfect kid to be an asshole
> 
> warnings for non-con of the touching variety. it all happened off screen and prior to the beginning of this story, but there is a somewhat lengthy discussion of it. stay safe, babes!
> 
> i don't own teen wolf and am not profiting off this work

Malia doesn’t notice the change at first because Stiles is her boyfriend.  She doesn’t know much about boyfriends, but she knows that they’re supposed to hug you and kiss you and otherwise touch you or people won’t think that you’re together.  Which Malia finds a little bit ridiculous, honestly, because Stiles doesn’t suddenly stop being her boyfriend just because they don’t walk the halls holding hands like Scott and Kira do.  Malia doesn’t like holding hands – Stiles walks too slow.

Either way, it takes a while for Malia to realize that something is up, but once she does it becomes glaringly obvious.  Stiles just…won’t stop touching her.  He leans heavily against her body at lunch, plays with her hair during pre-Calc, and even waits for her outside the girls’ room so that he can loop an arm around her shoulders the second she steps back into the hallway.

Truth be told, he’s being really clingy and it’s kind of driving her nuts.

Malia’s not sure why she goes to her dad of all people.  The second he hears that his baby girl spends the seven-hour school day with a boy’s hands all over her, he flips.  “Tell him to back off!” he says, face heating with anger.  There’s a vein throbbing in his forehead.  “You don’t have to be nice to him if he’s doing things you don’t want, Malia!”

“It’s not like that, Dad,” Malia promises and it’s not.  She likes Stiles – maybe even loves him – and he’s never pressured her in any way.  In fact, when clothes come off it’s usually because _she_ initiated it.  Touching isn’t a problem – it’s _clinging_.  She doesn’t want to feel like one of those lovesick teenagers than can’t go five minutes without their significant other.

She survived eight years on her own in the woods – she’d like to think she can go a whole day without Stiles cemented to her side.

Scott isn’t any more help than her dad was.  “Stiles is weird,” he says like Malia didn’t already know that.  “He probably read about it on some stupid relationship blog or something.  You know how he can get.  Obsessive and stuff.”

“So it’s not some, like, _pack_ thing?” Malia wonders, feeling like she’s grasping in the dark.  “Like some kind of scenting?”

“Probably not.  Stiles can’t smell anything anyway.”  Scott shrugs.  “But if it makes you feel better, you smell like you’ve taken a two-week bath in _eau de Stiles_.”

Malia rolls her eyes.  “Wonderful.”

When Stiles tries to hold her hand beneath the library table during study hall, Malia just can’t take it anymore.  She doesn’t yank her hand away because he’s Stiles and she likes him, dammit, but her body does go rigid in surprise.  They don’t hold hands.  They just don’t.

“What gives?” she hisses, glancing pointedly down at where their fingers are linked together.  “What’s wrong with you?”

It comes out harsher than she means it, but his scent is soured with something she can’t quite place and it has her stomach tying in knots.  Stiles always smells kind of bad – of anxiety and a low-grade, simmering melancholy that he can never quite shake – but this is something else entirely.  It puts her on edge.

Stiles, for his part, flinches and slowly pulls his hand away.  “I’m sorry,” he whispers, the corners of his mouth turning down.  “I’m all—”  He trails off, wagging a hand in an unreadable gesture. 

“Messed up?” Malia questions, trying to keep it as gentle as possible.  Subtlety and tact aren’t really her strongest character traits, but Stiles is important and she can be gentle with him if she needs to be.  He’s fragile and not just in body.  “Seems like you’ve been messed up for a while.”

Stiles snorts mirthlessly.  “Yeah, my entire life.”

“Not what I meant.”  Malia watches him thoughtfully.  Then she gets to her feet and reaches down to grab Stiles by his shirt sleeve.  “We’re gonna go talk.”

“Um—” Stiles says, but it’s all he can get out before he’s being yanked toward the nearest bathroom.  Malia picks the boys’ room because her social hang-ups are basically nil.  She’ll hang out in a boys’ bathroom all day…she doesn’t give a damn.  Besides, Stiles is much more likely to talk in there.

Malia spares three seconds to make sure the bathroom is empty – it is – before she shoves Stiles into the handicapped stall and locks the door behind them.  “It’s just you and me now, Stiles,” she says, hoping it sounds kind and supportive and girlfriend-y.  Stiles is so much better at this than her.  “So you can spill.”

Stiles squints at her like he’s confused, but the wave of panic that hits Malia’s nose tells her that he knows exactly what she’s talking about.  She doesn’t call him on it.  Scott says they have to let humans feel like they have secrets even if they don’t.  “Spill what?”

“Spill what’s fucking wrong with you!”  Okay, not her best line but she’s _trying_ , alright.  She takes a deep breath to steady herself and lets her voice go quiet and soft.  “You’ve been following me around like a lost pup these past couple weeks…and I don’t just mean that figuratively.  I once had to take care of a litter of little baby coyotes when some hunter murdered their mom in the middle of the spring, so I know all about pups.  They literally depended on me for _food_ , Stiles, and they struck out on their own more often than you are.  So I repeat my question: what gives?”

“You fed the babies milk?”  Stiles stares at her in surprise, which is an understandable reaction, Malia figures.  “Like from your _teats_?”

“God, Stiles, I’m not an actual fucking coyote!  I never had a fucking litter so of _course_ I couldn’t give them fucking milk!  I hunted for rabbits and squirrels and shit.”  She shakes her head quickly as if to clear it.  “Just tell me why you’re being so clingy so we can go back to class.”

“Can’t a guy just want to spend time with his girlfriend?” Stiles asks, forcing a smile that wobbles across his mouth.  The sour scent from before permeates the stall, so thick Malia feels like she might choke on it.  “Is that a crime?”

“A guy can do that, yes,” Malia agrees, nodding thoughtfully.  “But a Stiles doesn’t do things without a reason.”  Then she tilts her head thoughtfully to the side.  “Are you worried I’m gonna leave you?  Because I’d never do that.  We don’t leave each other.”

It hits a nerve.  Malia can tell because all of a sudden Stiles’ lips are trembling and the room _reeks_ of desperate sadness.  “Are you sure that’s a promise you can keep?” he asks – chokes on it, really.  He’s dropped all pretenses of being okay, his hands wringing together nervously.  “Are you sure it’s a promise you _want_ to keep?”

That’s when Malia finally figures out what’s hiding underneath the usual scent of _Stiles Stiles Stiles_.  It’s disgust.  At himself.

Malia’s heart clenches.

“Of _course_ I wanna stay,” she whispers, stepping forward to grab him by the shoulders.  “You’re the only one that keeps me in this damn town.  If it weren’t for you, I’d’ve run back to the woods by now.”

She thought it was a good thing to say – it _felt_ good and she meant it with all of her heart – but suddenly Stiles is crying right there next to the toilet paper dispenser.  His face crumbles into something heartbroken and ugly and fat tears roll down his cheeks and drip off his chin.  “Garret h- _hurt_ me,” he finally bursts out like he just can’t hold it back any longer.  He swipes the back of his hand across his runny nose.  “Back before they arrested him and Violet.”

A growl catches in the back of Malia’s throat, fierce protectiveness seeping into her bones and turning her blood hot and boiling.  No one’s allowed to hurt her boyfriend.  _No one_.“What did he do?” she demands, running careful hands over Stiles’ arms and torso to check for injuries.  “Are you healed?  How did me and Scott miss it?”

“Because it wasn’t that kind of hurt,” Stiles says brokenly, eyes wide and wet and full of pain, and suddenly Malia gets it.  She gets it and it’s all she can do not to vomit.

“ _Stiles_ ,” she says raggedly, body rigid.  “Stiles, I—”

He shakes his head, cutting her off.  “It’s no big deal,” he promises despite the way the tears keep falling.  It sure doesn’t _look_ like it’s no big deal.  “It was just a hand down my gym shorts and Coach showed up before anything could really happen and the kid’s only fifteen, you know?  I’m, like, way older than him and I can deal with stuff – I’ve dealt with werewolves and monsters for years now! – and I _know_ it wasn’t my fault because that’s, like, Bad Touch 101 and my dad’s a fucking sheriff so I’ve heard about this shit since I was little, so—”

“Stiles, stop!” Malia cries, unable to listen to another word.  Her stomach hurts.  Stiles’ mouth snaps shut, his face so red it looks painful.  He smells like shame and tears.  “You don’t—you don’t have to do that, okay?  You don’t have to wave it away!  He _hurt_ you and that’s not okay…even if it could’ve been worse.”  Her voice breaks.  “You don’t have to ‘deal’ with it, Stiles!  If you’re sad or scared or whatever, let yourself be sad or scared.”

“I’m so fucking tired of being scared!” Stiles snaps, knuckling away his tears in annoyance.  “I’ve spent the past three weeks terrified out of my fucking mind and I’m _sick_ of it!  Whenever I close my eyes I feel his hands all over me and I just—I need to feel something else.  I need to feel _someone_ else.”

“Like me,” Malia says slowly as everything falls into place.  Suddenly she feels like a major dick.  Stiles wasn’t touching her to be clingy or lovesick or dramatic…he was touching her because he needed reassurance.  Because he needed to feel safe.  Because he needed to know that not everyone’s hands would hurt him.  And she’d _pushed him away_.  “ _God,_ Stiles.”

She opens her mouth to apologize or sob or both, but suddenly the bathroom door opens and footsteps walk inside and over to one of the urinals, so she settles on pulling Stiles into her arms and holding him tightly.  He buries his face in her shoulder and makes himself small.  He’s trembling from head to toe.

She presses her lips to the sensitive spot behind his ear and rubs his back soothingly, over and over again, until the guy leaves and the bathroom is quiet again.  Stiles is done crying by then, but nothing can erase the misery etched into the lines of his face.  He looks old and broken down and exhausted.  Malia traces his jawline with shaking fingers.

“I’ll never hurt you,” she promises even though she’s fairly certain he knows it.  He needs to hear it anyway.  “And I’ll never scare you.”  She smudges her thumb across his bottom lip, wet with spit from crying.  “And I’ll never, _ever_ leave you.”

“I believe you,” he whispers, barely audible.  He can hardly look at her.  “It’s just—hard right now.  I’m really, really messed up.”

“That’s okay,” Malia reassures him.  Her fingers are in his hair now, soothingly working through the tangles.  “I can tell you whenever you like.”

“Just—keep touching me?  Maybe?”  Stiles’ face looks so hopeful Malia’s eyes prick with tears.  She knows she’s not the one that caused his hurts – that’s all on Garrett, the fucking asshole – but she can’t help but feel guilty.  She should’ve been there to stop it.  “I just need to be sure.”

“Okay,” Malia says and puts her hands around his waist, fingertips pressing gently into the bottom of his ribcage.  She hopes they feel like _I love you_ and _I’ll protect you_ all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> yooo thanks for reading!!!


End file.
